2017 Human Freedom Index

I track the “Human Freedom Index” put out by Ian Vasquez and Tanja Porcnik at the CATO Institute each year. They combine personal freedom and economic freedom to get an index.  This year’s freest countries – 

1) Hong Kong 2) Switzerland 3) New Zealand 4) Ireland 5) Denmark 6) Canada 7) United Kingdom 8) Australia 9) Finland 10) Netherlands 11) Luxembourg 12) Austria 13) Germany 14) Norway 15) Sweden 16) Malta 17) Belgium 18) Czech Republic (Where’s the US you must be asking!) 19) Portugal 20) Lithuania 21) Poland 22) Estonia 23) United States of America.  

The USA was down four spots this year.  We Americans like to think we are the freest country on earth because after all – didn’t we “invent” freedom?  I like to think we did as far as our founding documents go.  But we have turned our back too often on those documents, and allowed special interest in the government class to take too much power for themselves, at our expense.

We need to be careful.  This could get worse if we keep asking the government to help us in so many ways, by confiscating the means from us.